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« 2026. # 4 (190)

The Ethnology Notebooks. 2026. № 4 (190), 1247—1255

UDK 821.161.2.09:398:7.01

DOI https://doi.org/10.15407/

  • Received: 21.06.2026
  • Accepted: 25.06.2026
  • Published: ??.??.2026

THE MIRACLE OF KUPALA NIGHT: THE SYMBOLISM OF FERN FLOWER IN THE FICTIONALIZED BIOGRAPHIES OF ARTISTS

LEVYTSKA Oksana

  • ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5033-4661
  • PhD, docent, Department of Philology
  • at the Ukrainian Catholic University, 17 Sventsitskoho str.
  • Lviv, 79011 and Department of Applied Linguistics
  • at the Lviv Polytechnic National University,
  • 12, Bandery Str., 79000, Lviv, Ukraine,
  • Contacts: e-mail: oksana_levytska@ukr.net

Abstract. According to ancient beliefs, the fern flower blooms with unusual radiant light for a short while during the Kupala night and gifts unimaginable treasures to those who find it. This mythological image establishes a connection with the creative process in literature about artists, inspiring creative potential and serving as a vehicle for transformation and mystical action. The Kupala Night rituals in the biographies of female artists are often associated with initiation, passage to another dimension, and serve as a type of ceremony «for entering the secret society» (M. Eliade). Such initiation rituals are clearly traced in the children’s fairy tale about Mariya Pryimachenko Mariya Who Painted Animals by Svitlana Taratorina. The rituals and the fern itself act as symbols of magical creative awakening and passage to the metaphysical world in Volodymyr Yavorivskyi’s novel about Kateryna Bilokur and Liudmyla Lysenko’s trilogy World Creation by Mariya.

The aim of the paper is to analyze the symbolism of fern flowers in fictionalized biographies of Ukrainian female artists in the context of an initiation ritual, which explains the secret of creativity, the nature of being privy to secret knowledge, and moving beyond the confines of the regular world to the world of chosen ones.

The study relies on comparative methodology and has a multidisciplinary nature combining folklore and ethnography studies, literary studies and art criticism, as well as the methodological toolkit of intermedial studies.

The article analyses the folklore symbolism of the fern flower in fictionalized biographies of Ukrainian female artists as a sign of the rebirth of creative potential, the emergence of superpowers, the initiation into the secret world of creativity and the unravelling of the secret knowledge. Writers use the symbolism of the Kupala Night and the legend of the magical power of the fern flower as a symbolic and plot-generating device in the fictionalized biographies of Mariya Pryimachenko, Kateryna Bilokur and Paraska Khoma.

Keywords: fern flower, folklore, intermediality, Ukrainian literature, folk art, comparative studies, visual art, fictionalized biographies.

REFERENCES

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Our authors
Kuzmenko Oksana Senior Researcher, Candidate of... read »
Roman Radovych. Researcher, Ph.D. in History. read »
Ivashkiv Halyna. Doctor of Sciences in Art Criticism,... read »
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